As I’ve been seeing more talk about losing the Affordable Care Act, more talk about men’s birth control and more stigma arise due to the use of birth control, I wanted to discuss my reason for wanting and using birth control and why I feel it should be affordable and accessible for all.
I never had a need for birth control until I was in my first relationship with my boyfriend. I had heard about it, I knew about condoms, but I never needed it for its purpose, or for its other medical purposes before that.
Birth control was something I knew I wanted once I knew I was in a relationship, and once I knew I wanted to have sex.
The reason for this is because once I was in a relationship, and even before meeting my boyfriend, I was going on a few dates and I wanted to know I was protecting my body and myself in case something should happen—just to be on the safe side.
When I was in high school, I had always imagined being married and having kids between the ages of 25 to 27. I honestly thought that was a good frame of time, a good place to be in life, and a great age to start a family when I wouldn’t be too old to hang out with my kids, as they grew older.
As of now, I am 22, my boyfriend and I have just passed two years together, and we have no immediate need or want to get married or have kids. My ideas and thoughts changed as I decided to move on from high school and into community college. I was realizing that school was going to take about four years from my life, and I knew I wasn’t personally ready to raise a child during those years.
As I moved on to university, I realized that I was getting closer to that 25-year-old, and I knew I wasn’t anywhere ready to even think about marriage or children.
As I am finishing out my final year at university, I am realizing now that having a kid is something I probably won’t want until my late 30s, because I have yet to find my dream career.
My goal is to work and be successful and comfortable before having a family.
I was lucky to have met a man who has some of the same ideals as me, and we both had agreed that kids and marriage aren’t immediate necessaries in our lives. When we first started dating, I was fortunate to talk to him about wanting to go on birth control before beginning anything serious between us, and I was happy to receive a positive response and his willingness to wait until I had made my doctors appointment and was on the pill for the minimum amount of time.
Now, my story has the most positive standing that I know among a lot of others. As I read more stories and articles, I am realizing more and more that there are a lot of women who are not able to have this happy ending. That they can’t afford birth control, that they aren’t allowed access or that they are in a situation where parents or significant others don’t find birth control as a moral or justified resource.
From where we are in time as women, I am appalled still that something like birth control even has to be a matter. I find the whole industry of feminine products to be sad—making money from a biological happening. I find that the control over a female body is becoming more determined by the hands of men.
As a woman who wants a career, who wants the connection sex brings in my relationship and who enjoys what birth control has done for my overall health, I’m still scared that someday that might not be what I can have anymore.
